Our Mission is to keep our audience with an interrupted stream of financial information from serious sources, with the objective to provide the tools and the sufficient knowledge about investments in the financial markets.

Subscribe To

Translate

Search This Blog

Search Tool

Jul 27, 2018

Twitter to Prioritize Fixing Platform Over User Growth, Shares Plunge

Reuters

SAN FRANCISCO, July 27 (Reuters) - Twitter Inc on Friday
reported fewer monthly active users than analysts expected and warned
that the closely-watched figure could keep falling as it deletes phony
accounts, sending shares sharply lower in early trading.
The company said the work it was doing to clean up Twitter by purging
automated and spam accounts had some impact on its user metrics in the
second quarter, and that it would prioritize work to improve suspicious
accounts and reduce hate speech and other abusive content over projects
that could attract more users.
Monthly active users fell by 1 million to 335 million from the
previous three months. Analysts on average had expected 340 million
monthly active users in the third quarter, according to Thomson Reuters
I/B/E/S.
Twitter said the decline in the third quarter would be in the
mid-single-digit millions, suggesting a sequential decline to around 330
million users.
Twitter shares fell more than 15 percent in pre-market trading.
Twitter, like bigger rival Facebook Inc, has been under pressure from
regulators in several countries to weed out hate speech, abusive
content and misinformation, better protect user data and boost
transparency on political ad spending.
"We are making active decisions to prioritize health initiatives over
near-term product improvements that may drive more usage of Twitter as a
daily utility," the company said in a shareholder letter accompanying
the results.
Analysts had expected a gain of 1 million users, and the results
could harden concerns that Twitter lacks a clear strategy to grapple
with various platform problems and grow usage and revenue together.
Chief Executive Jack Dorsey said in a statement that daily users grew
11 percent compared to a year ago, saying this showed that addressing
"problem behaviors" was turning the service into a daily utility.
The company did not reveal the number of daily users.
Twitter had said earlier in July that deleting phony accounts would
not have much impact on monthly users, since the purge focused on
inactive accounts, a key metric for investors and advertisers. Twitter’s
relations with advertisers have been strained by concerns about phony
accounts bought by users to boost their following.
Revenue of $711 million, mostly from advertising and up 24 percent
from last year, exceeded the average estimate of $696 million among
analyst research aggregated by Thomson Reuters.
Twitter said it benefited from two weeks of the FIFA World Cup in the
second quarter, with ads tied to the soccer tournament generating $30
million in revenue.
Profit was $100 million, with a $42 million boost due to a tax
accounting move. Twitter turned its first-ever profit in the fourth
quarter of 2017 and has been profitable ever since, but warned last
quarter revenue growth would slow this year and costs would rise.
Non-GAAP earnings per share were 17 cents per share, in-line with analyst estimates.
Twitter has said increased video programming, including news shows
and live sports, and investing in technology that automatically surfaces
interesting content with limited user intervention should make the
service appealing to first-timers.
Twitter said it lost some users due to the introduction of the
General Data Protection Regulation in Europe in May but it did not note
any revenue impact.
Twitter also saw usage fall after saying it would not subsidize users
who accessed its application through text messages without paying
messaging fees to wireless carriers.
The company increased its capital expenditures forecast for the year
to between $450 million and $500 million, from $375 million to $450
million, as it expands and upgrades the computer infrastructure
underlying its service.
Costs related to licensing video and powering automated analysis of
user data increased overall expenses 10 percent to $631 million in the
second quarter compared with a year ago.
(Reporting by Paresh Dave; Writing by Meredith Mazzilli Editing by Peter Henderson, Edmund Blair and Nick Zieminski)

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

ADVERTISEMENT

FRAUDE DE LOS BANCOS-PERÚ

If you are are investigating a fraud case and need to contact MasterCard to assist with the investigation. Who can we speak with?

A: Please send an email to our Law Enforcement Support Center at Law_Enforcement_Support@mastercard.com, or call 1-866-308-7272 (U.S. & Canada) or 1-636-722-4046 (International). We will respond to your inquiry within 24-48 hours.